The purpose of this panel is to bring two interdisciplinary fields (Disability Studiesand Modern & Contemporary Poetics) into conversation, putting pressure on emergingterminology in these fields, with a view toward imagining a "post-ableist poetics."

Lennard Davis' founding study, Enforcing Normalcy, posits the source and salientcharacter of ableist ideology as specifically Modern, while his recent work on "Dismodernism"envisions "a new category based on the partial, incomplete subject whose realizationis not autonomy and independence, but dependency and interdependence." Deliberateor not, this phrasing reads practically identical to axioms in innovative poetics(re: readership as well as composition), specifically those poetics associated withModernist, avant-garde, and contemporary poetries of "indeterminacy."

Classical and neo-romantic conceptions of aesthetics' relationship to eugenics hasbeen a salient point of scrutiny in Disability Studies thus far. It remains tobring Davis' cue into a new conversation about the ways in which Disability Studiesand poetics can serve one another. Thus, I'm seeking papers addressing forms, processes,and systems--ways of making--which engage or engender new subjectivities which maybe specifically post-ableist.

* This panel is proposed, not yet accepted. Send an abstract and short bio (orCV) by March 17 to patrickdurgin at earthlink dot net. I will be in touch soonthereafter. I am also seeking a chair / respondent for the panel.